Topics in Politics: Representation, Identity, and Dissent

     In his article “‘“Get on the Internet! Says the LORD’: Religion, Cyberspace and Christianity in Contemporary Africa,” author J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu compares the use of the internet by African Pentecostal/charismatic churches to the use of the internet by traditional Christian churches. According to Asamoah-Gyadu, one of the primary differences between how these newer and older religions in Africa use the internet is based on the nature of their evangelicalism. This is to say that the newer Pentecostal/charismatic churches see the internet as a potential means of converting people and use more interactive websites, while older, more traditional Christian churches use their internet pages more like news feeds. The article argues that the internet is transforming religion by allowing people to participate across vast distances and stay connected with fellow members, while also providing a novel avenue for evangelism and conversion. Representation of an identity in an ...

     In the article “Decentralization: Fueling the Fire or Dampening the Flames of Ethnic Conflict and Secessionism?” author Dawn Brancati hypothesizes that even though decentralizing government has often been a proposed solution to ethnic conflicts, there are many reasons to believe that this option can actually increase ethnic tensions by encouraging regional parties to emerge. These parties then “increase ethnic conflict and secessionism by reinforcing regionally based ethnic identities, producing legislation that favors certain groups over others, and mobilizing groups to engage in ethnic conflict and secessionism or by supporting terrorist organizations that participate in these activities.” Brancati also theorizes that some countries have more success than others with the decentralization method for dealing with ethnic conflict due to additional factors regarding the specific components of the decentralization such as “the size of regions, the number of regional leg...

     For this blog post, I chose to read “Collective Identity and Social Movements” by Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper. In their piece, Polletta and Jasper argue that the term “collective identity” has been asked to do too much in the scholarly community. They seek to examine additional questions related to the term “collective identity” to inquire as to whether collective identity is a cause for, or product of, social movements and to study the broader relationship between collective identity, individual experience, and social engagement. The authors conclude that “structural interests are often recent in origin; that we may engage in moral protest to develop the kind of self we want; that what is considered a good strategy is often based on what groups it is symbolically associated with, and that movements promote new identities as a way to gain power as well as transform selves.” I think that individual decisions influence the success of collective action in a...

     The article “Female Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide” by Sara E. Brown explores the role that women played in carrying out direct and indirect violence during the Rwandan Genocide. Brown observes that women are frequently overlooked in scholarship on the Rwandan Genocide, and advocates for the creation of a more accurate historical representation of the event by researching and including women as perpetrators, not simply as “victims or bystanders.” Brown concludes that aside from actually carrying out direct or indirect acts of violence, women in 1994 Rwanda played a large role in creating a culture that emphasized negative outgroup attitudes and strengthened ethnic divides. Brown takes issue with the assumption that women cannot be capable of perpetrating war crimes because they are mothers or sisters, and points out the important role of such mothers in fostering animosity towards other ethnic groups in their own children. Brown addresses the theme of patriar...

     In the article “Celebration and Suppression: The Strategic Uses of Identity by the Lesbian and Gay Movement,” author Mary Bernstein argues that identity politics are more complicated than previous literature has suggested, and discusses the manifold ways that identity can be “deployed” by activists to pursue political or cultural change. The article examines several activist movements including the lesbian and gay movement, the feminist movement, and the Civil Rights movement to drive home the point that key differences in the role of identity in these types of movements are largely dependent upon the specific objectives and location of the movement among other factors. Bernstein focuses on the extent to which an identity is highlighted or concealed in a given movement, making a distinction between “identity for critique” which seeks to challenge cultural norms and “identity for education” which seeks to alter attitudes about minority groups. Bernstein claims that in...

     In the article “Group Entitlement, Anger and Participation in Intergroup Violence,” author Christopher Claassen discusses the relationship between emotion and intergroup violence. He concludes that emotion is a very crucial, often ignored element in intergroup violence, and that anger towards an outgroup can be a reason for civilians to engage in violence against fellow civilians. Furthermore, he details that it is not necessarily the allotment of resources themselves that causes people to become angry at outgroups, but an “incongruence” between the real allocation of resources and the allocation perceived to be desirable by the individual or the group as a whole. Claassen believes his findings complicate existing theories on the role of material resources and emotion in intergroup violence. I think there are numerous factors that can cause a person to “activate” an identity or take action. For one, it does seem likely that the allocation of material resources play...

     In their article “Why do Ethnic Groups Rebel? New Data and Analysis,” Lars-Erik Cederman, Andreas Wimmer, and Brian Min discuss the role of ethnicity in civil-war-type conflicts. They argue that their study shows that it is possible to determine the conditions under which ethnonationalist conflicts emerge. Specifically, they argue that the size of ethnic groups excluded from the governmental power structure informs the likelihood of rebellion. That is, bigger excluded ethnic groups are more likely to rebel against the government than smaller ones. They also observe that a history of conflicts or tensions between groups in a given country, including recent conflicts, are related to the likelihood that a new bout of violence will begin. All in all, Cederman, Wimmer, and Min seek to demonstrate that ethnicity is an important factor to examine in civil wars and that there is a relationship between an ethnic group’s access to political representation and the likelihood th...

“What Is Ethnic Identity and Does It Matter?” by Kanchan Chandra discusses the definition of the word “ethnic” and the classification of ethnicity based on different variables. Chandra’s article focuses on what qualifies as an ethnic identity based on previously given definitions of “ethnic” to highlight the issues with these definitions and to present her own method and suggestions for determining ethnicity. Though the article specifically points to the difficulties of assigning people to ethnic categories, it also points more broadly to the difficulties with identity categorization as a whole. I supplemented this reading with the piece by Teri L. Caraway which discusses the role of gender in political science research and the way in which incorporating different gendered questions into political science alters our perception of events, whether historical or contemporary. In considering the reading question for this assignment, I return to my definition of “identity” from my previous ...

In Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper’s piece on "identity", the authors argue that the term "identity" is too loaded to be practically useful in an analytical or scientific manner. By this they mean it has too many meanings (often contradictory meanings) and in another sense, no meaning at all. The term causes us to think about a person’s “identity” as something that is “real” in an objective sense which may or may not reflect our intended meaning behind the term. In their discussion, the authors juxtapose “weak” conceptions of "identity" with “strong” conceptions of "identity", and highlight the issues with conceiving of "identity" as either hard and stable (strong) or fluid and open to change (weak). Brubaker and Cooper ultimately suggest that it may be beneficial to abandon the term "identity" in favor of varied, more specific terminology.  To consider the question, What is "identity"?, we must first determin...